Attendance Numbers for Edmonton’s Capital EX

Edmonton’s Capital EX wrapped up yesterday. Sharon and I visited on Thursday evening and had a good time. Today Northlands released the attendance numbers, and though slightly lower than previous years, the ten-day festival still recorded an impressive 717,966 visits. I had been looking forward to the final numbers, so that I could compare it with previous years.

Here are the attendance numbers for the last ten years (you can download the raw data below):

Though much of the data is missing, I was able to track down some numbers going all the way back to 1879:

After getting this information, I decided to compare it to the population of Edmonton for the same time periods. Here is the comparison for the last ten years:

And the same comparison starting in 1879:

A couple things to note about the data in this post:

The event changed from Klondike Days (adopted in 1962) to Capital EX in 2006. This explains the large drop that year.

The event was a six-day fair from 1912 to 1967, and a ten-day fair thereafter (I think, certainly for the last 20 years or so it has been). I haven’t adjusted the figures for this.

The population data, which comes from the City of Edmonton, doesn’t account for surrounding communities.

I’d be interested to see the daily figures, just to see how many people came on a day to day basis, the fact you fit the entire population of Edmonton into those grounds – even over 10 days – is pretty incredible.